Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 13, 2014 @04:20PM
from the what-the-market-will-bear dept.

An anonymous reader writes with official news that, as expected, "Amazon officially announced that it is increasing Prime Membership fees from $79 to $99. Amazon Students will pay $49, and participants of Amazon Fresh (the grocery shopping service) will continue to have a $299 fee. The price hike in Prime Membership is attributed to rising shipping costs, but some wonder if the 'real question around Prime is whether it's sustainable at all, even at a higher price.'"

First thing I did was go try to turn off auto-renew. It turns out that they've hidden that feature, and you actually have to attempt to cancel your membership to do it. Then it gives you an option to end immediately if you qualify for a rebate or end at the normal time (6 months from now in my case).

Just so you aren't in a hurry. Free "super saver" shipping has gotten slower and slower over the last year or so. It's gotten so bad that I actually shop around again. They should not underestimate the effect this has on customers - I took a vacation from Newegg when they started occasionally using some bizarro shipping scheme that had my packages leaving my state for Kentucky and then eventually coming back after a hand-off to the USPS.

I had that attitude, but so many of the local sellers are just gouging. I needed a 12 foot HDMI cable a while back. It was going to cost me $10 on Amazon, but I wanted it right now. I went to Best Buy, half a mile down the road. They wanted $40 for the same cable.

Really? My brother has Netflix and it looks to be leaps ahead of Amazon in terms content available. Amazon has a larger and more recent library but only if you include episodes and movies that you have to purchase, which run $1.99 (for an episode) - $29.99 (for a season or a movie).

It's still a GREAT deal if you use their streaming video service. Netflix streaming only is about the same cost (a few bucks more for DVD's by mail) and they have a lot less stuff than Amazon, at least stuff I want to watch. The free shipping thing is of dubious value, at least for me, because most items are more expensive if they have prime shipping available. Some other Prime benefits help make my kindles more usable (Free books, downloadable video streams for off line viewing). But all these extras are over and above the video streaming.

Where $79 would be preferable $99 is still cheap so I'm not complaining. We are still under $10/month here.

Every month, members get to borrow a book that they don't own and keep it for the month. When they pick out a book the following month, they have to return the one they borrowed the month before. They don't buy the book, so they don't own it.

INSTRUCTIONS TO LOCK IN $79 RATEQuote from orick:If your current Prime membership is scheduled to expire on or after April 17th, and therefore would auto-renew at the $99 price, you can effectively lock in the $79 price by taking the following steps: